Reviews | Ton Elias: “A parliamentary inquiry is not intended to be a court”

Unfortunately, like so many powerful parliamentary tools (motions!), the House of Representatives itself is once again in danger of undermining an extremely useful tool: parliamentary inquiries.

A parliamentary inquiry is useful because it reveals facts making it possible to consult all the archives (even those of the Council of Ministers, well before they are released) and to compel witnesses to be questioned if necessary. It also contains a deterrent element: if I do it now as a minister, in nine years I will be sitting on a bench with seven armed to the teeth deputies in front of me, plus three cameras recording tirelessly.

But then these commissions of inquiry (and their variants, such as parliamentary commissions of inquiry and inquiry) must do what the law tells them: investigate facts and document them. Provide context, present ideas afterwards, and make recommendations.

But what certainly should not be, to use a loaded term from The Hague, is to make it a court. Because it would be so kind and cathartic for the victims, whether they were alleged or not. The worst example of this was an almost hysterical Renske Leijten (SP) on the childcare allowance questioning committee, in which CDA chairman Chris van Dam also got involved.

With the conclusions already in mind, many interrogations were conducted in an unreal way: leading questions, not letting the witnesses finish, no interest in the answers. Anyone who doesn’t believe me should come back to the interrogation with Gerard Blankestijn, Director of Benefits at the Tax and Customs Administration from 2011 to 2018. It became a court, not a parliamentary inquiry or interrogation.

Self-profiling

In the 1980s, I edited two parliamentary inquiries for the daily NOS (RSV 1983 and ABP 1988). Later, I chaired a parliamentary committee of inquiry once (ICT 2014) and was a member of a committee of inquiry (Fyra 2016). In any case, extremely critical questions were sometimes asked. But he did it in a way that left room for answers. Moreover, the interrogators were seriously interested in the answers rather than their own questions, in order to profile themselves.

Does it create a trend? And unfortunately, after the publication of the report on Groningen, it seems to be the case

In doing so, the Complementary Benefits Commission deliberately overstepped its bounds, going further than it was asked to do (with the adoption of the parliamentary motion). She has already formulated highly political conclusions on the first page of the report instead of presenting the facts as clearly as possible and making recommendations. After all, it is the House of Representatives that must draw conclusions based on an investigative report about the policy, future improvements and possible policy consequences.

When this happened, the anxious question was already: does this create a trend? And unfortunately, after the publication of the report on Groningen, this seems to be the case. Here, too, a strong political conclusion if the committee declares that there is a “debt of honor” to the inhabitants of Groningen which must be repaid. There is a good chance that this conclusion is justified on the basis of the factual elements collected, but the fact is precisely that it is the House of Representatives which must reach this political conclusion on the basis of these factual elements. Now a group of MPs, meeting as a committee of inquiry, are already drawing political conclusions and publishing them with great fanfare in Groningen even to alleviate the suffering.

It would be more than wise for parliamentary inquiries to go back to their origins.